CarbonBased
The Nothing
- Jun 18, 2026
- 71
I think we can generally agree that a tendency for suicidality has an overall negative effect on the fitness of a specific individual from an evolutionary perspective. Suicidal people are usually less productive when they are alive, which means that they are less likely to successfully reproduce or care for their offspring. Oh, and obviously they can't do either of those things if they're dead. As such, assuming that the tendency toward suicide has a genetic component, it would be heavily selected against during the evolutionary process. In other words, it's quite likely that we are literally wired against getting or following up on suicidal ideas. I'm sure most of us are familiar with SI, which is a prominent example of this.
Besides the classic biological evolution, we should also consider the evolution of ideas. Much like genes, ideas can multiply in number (through people sharing them with each other), be subject to mutation, etc. Since ideas require us, human hosts, to survive and multiply, what kind of ideas are most likely to grow big? Presumably, those are the ideas that make us more successful, satisfied, fulfilled, etc. On the contrary, the kind of ideas that might suggest that suicide is a valid option, that the life is meaningless, etc., will have a hard time surviving since those who could share these ideas often don't live long enough to share them effectively or lose the ability to gain enough social status to get some authority behind their ideas.
Because of this I would expect that whatever the reality around suicide is, people on average are very likely to be biased to view suicide more negatively, not because this is indeed the case, but simply because the logic behind how ideas and genes spread make this most likely. As such, anyone who aims to evaluate the topic of suicide objectively should be more skeptical of the kinds of conclusions that seem to deny its validity. It's really not the kind of topic that can be brushed off as 'common sense' without participating in intellectual dishonesty.
Besides the classic biological evolution, we should also consider the evolution of ideas. Much like genes, ideas can multiply in number (through people sharing them with each other), be subject to mutation, etc. Since ideas require us, human hosts, to survive and multiply, what kind of ideas are most likely to grow big? Presumably, those are the ideas that make us more successful, satisfied, fulfilled, etc. On the contrary, the kind of ideas that might suggest that suicide is a valid option, that the life is meaningless, etc., will have a hard time surviving since those who could share these ideas often don't live long enough to share them effectively or lose the ability to gain enough social status to get some authority behind their ideas.
Because of this I would expect that whatever the reality around suicide is, people on average are very likely to be biased to view suicide more negatively, not because this is indeed the case, but simply because the logic behind how ideas and genes spread make this most likely. As such, anyone who aims to evaluate the topic of suicide objectively should be more skeptical of the kinds of conclusions that seem to deny its validity. It's really not the kind of topic that can be brushed off as 'common sense' without participating in intellectual dishonesty.
